So you’ve been invited to visit Aunt Edna and Uncle Ed. Not that you want to go, but, after all, they’re family, Aunt Edna is a fabulous cook, and it isn’t too long a drive up to Maine. Uncle Ed emails you directions. Of course Aunt Edna, Luddite that she is, sends a long letter, complete with a hand-drawn map. She wants you to have a nice, scenic trip. Without paying too much attention, you toss both your printout of Uncle Ed’s directions and Aunt Edna’s map on the front seat. You know what the first part of the trip is anyway. It’ll be a chance to see what’s on the radio these days. Toss a backpack in the car and you’re on your way.
Which exit from the Maine Turnpike? Uncle Ed says to take exit 4. Aunt Edna wants you to take Exit 2 and head up route 1. “Pretty drive,” she says. You pull over and look at both sets of directions, side by side. Hmmm. They sure are different. They have you taking such different routes on the way to the same place. One (Uncle Ed) gets you there quickly, and of course Aunt Edna wants you to try the lobster at that little place tucked away off route 1A. You can’t follow them both. What to do...?
In Lady Antebellum’s lead off song from their self-titled album, "Love Don't Live Here," we go on a journey. The song contains roadmaps, telling us how to proceed, where to go next, what connects to what, when to pause for a rest, when and where to stop.
Listen to “Love Don’t Live Here”
Look at the verses. (I’ve omitted the pre-choruses and choruses):
Verse One:
Well this heart of mine/has been hardened like a stone
It might take some time/to get back what has gone
But I’m moving on/and you don’t hold my dreams
Like you did before/ and I will curse your name
Verse Two:
Well I heard the news/that you were back in town
Just passing through/to claim your lost and found
But I’m over you/ and there ain’t nothing that
You can say or do/to take what you did back
(Pre-Chorus/Chorus)
Verse Three:
Well baby you can try/to tell me how it is
And try to justify/ everything you did
But honey I’m no fool/ and I’ve been down this road
Too many times with you/ I think it’s best you go
(Pre-Chorus/Chorus)
In the first line of verse one is:
Well this heart of mine/has been hardened like a stone
(The “/” indicates that melodically, the line subdivides into 2 phrases.)
The second line,
It might take some time/to get back what has gone
repeats the melody of line 1, again subdividing into 2 phrases. Thus, the melody sets up a roadmap: the same melody is repeated, indicating that there are two separate, independent musical ideas.
Now let’s focus on the lyric and its roadmap. How does it divide its own ideas?
Look at the first two lines of Verse One, the beginning of our trip:
Well this heart of mine/has been hardened like a stone
It might take some time/to get back what has gone
The lyric divides into two ideas:
1: Well this heart of mine/has been hardened like a stone
2: It might take some time/to get back what has gone
This arrangement of lyric ideas follows the melodic roadmap quite nicely. Of course, that’s what should happen.
But look at the last two lines of verse one:
But I’m moving on/and you don’t hold my dreams
Like you did before/ and I will curse your name
Here the melody and lyrics are at odds. They want you to get off at different exits. While the melody still defines a 2-line group, the lyric ideas are arranged either as
But I’m moving on/and you don’t hold my dreams/ like you did before
and I will curse your name
or perhaps as
But I’m moving on
and you don’t hold my dreams like you did before
and I will curse your name
Either way, the melody and the lyric create different roadmaps, and the result is confusion. Which map are you supposed to follow? It’s harder to pay attention to what’s being said.
Verse Two
Well I heard the news/that you were back in town
Just passing through/to claim your lost and found
But I’m over you/ and there ain’t nothing that
You can say or do/to take what you did back
Again, as in verse one, the first two lines work fine-- the musical and lyrical roadmaps work together. But again, in the next two lines, the melody and lyrics are at odds. While the melody still defines a two-line group, the lyric ideas are arranged as
But I’m over you/
and there ain’t nothing that you can say or do to take what you did back
As in the last two lines of verse one, the melody and the lyric here create different roadmaps, causing confusion and diminishing the impact of the ideas.
OK, so what can we do about it?
The goal, of course, is that the lyric and melody work together – that they create compatible roadmaps, supporting each other and making the combination stronger than either the lyric or melody alone.
In general, there are two strategies for solving these mis-matches:
- Change the music to match the lyric’s roadmap, or
- Change the lyric to match the melodic roadmap.
First, let’s work on the last two lines of the first verse:
But I’m moving on/and you don’t hold my dreams
Like you did before/ and I will curse your name
In this case, let’s try changing the lyric to match the melodic roadmap:
But I’m moving on/and you don’t hold my dreams
Though you did before/ now I curse your name
This seems to be a pretty straightforward solution. Now the melodic and lyrical roadmaps support each other. Each one defines a complete idea. They take us on the same road.
Now let’s look at the last two lines of verse two:
But I’m over you/ and there ain’t nothing that
You can say or do/to take what you did back
Here it’s a bit more complicated to change the lyric roadmap, because of the rhyme words. If you wanted to match the lyric’s roadmap to the melody you’d actually have to find different rhymes and lines. Something like:
But I’m over you/ and there ain’t nothing left
No matter what you do/there’s no way I’ll forget
Of course, if you don’t want to change the lyric, you could try altering the melodic journey slightly. Try delaying “that” a little by holding out “nothing” a little more, placing “that” between the lines to create a smoother pivot between the 2 ideas:
But I’m over you/ and there ain’t nothiiiing
(thaaat)
You can say or do/to take what you did back
This changes the melodic roadmap by blurring the division between the two independent melodic lines, thus matching the “through-written” character of the lyric.
Here’s the third verse of “Love Don’t Live Here:”
Well baby you can try/to tell me how it is
And try to justify/ everything you did
But honey I’m no fool/ and I’ve been down this road
Too many times with you/ I think it’s best you go
The lyrical and melodic roadmaps of the first two lines, again, match pretty well. But in the next two lines, the same problem rears up again:
But honey I’m no fool/ and I’ve been down this road
Too many times with you/ I think it’s best you go
(At least they’re consistent, mis-matching the roadmaps of lines three and four in each verse.)
The lyrical roadmap is,
But honey I’m no fool
and I’ve been down this road too many times with you
I think it’s best you go
This is nothing like the melodic roadmap. Maybe try rearranging the phrases a bit:
Too many times with you/ I’ve been down this road
But honey I’m no fool/ I think it’s best you go
Or maybe, a little less awkwardly,
Well I’ve been down this road/ too many times with you
I think it’s best you go/ ‘cause honey I’m no fool
Again,
- Change the music to match the lyric’s roadmap, or
- Change the lyric to match the melodic roadmap.
Creating compatible roadmaps melodically and lyrically is essential to getting maximum meaning and impact from your song. Ignoring mis-matched roadmaps takes a third option:
- Change the music to match the lyric’s roadmap, or
- Change the lyric to match the melodic roadmap, or
- Keep it the way it is, since no one listens to lyrics anyway
Sticking with number 3
3. Keep it the way it is, since no one listens to lyrics anyway
is a self-fulfilling prophesy: if you arrange your phrases believing that matching the lyrical and melodic roadmaps doesn’t matter, guess what? You’ll be right. And no one will listen to the lyrics anyway. If you try to follow both maps, you’ll end up not knowing where you are. Your listener, in the presence of conflicting sets of directions, will be thinking about something other than what you’re saying, and may never get to taste Aunt Edna’s special recipe for cranberry stuffing.
Your choice.
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